Tag: intuitive mind

“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift”

The quickening march of technology has made work more efficient but most of the time we’re just getting better at doing because doing is easier and more satisfying than thinking. Engineers tend to jump straight into writing code. We love the earlier part of the creative process where we are programming and tinkering. We’re less found of testing and scaling. That’s why there are so many Hackathons and Facebook is portrayed as Hacker Heaven. Entrepreneurs tend to jump straight into building a company. We love putting together an all-star team and picking out the perfect Palo Alto office. We’re less fond of raising capital and finding a product-market fit. That’s why there are so many startups working on yet another photo-sharing app.

Everyone should spend more time thinking and researching. We need to resist the temptation to jump in too early. Engineers should think things through before starting to write code, perhaps with TDD/BDD. Entrepreneurs should think things through before printing those business cards, perhaps by vetting your idea through at least 7 people and a good night’s sleep. In a time where there are inexpensive tools for software startups (AWS, web frameworks, SDKs, SaaS services, etc.), it’s more tempting than ever to short-change the intuitive mind in favor of the rational one. Recently, even the tools for hardware startups are becoming affordable: MakerBot has made 3D scanning and printing cheap enough for prototyping and Kickstarter has lowered the high hurdle of the initial manufacturing run.

Given that many barriers are going away and new tools are cheaper and more accessible, what will companies compete on in the future? Design. Strategy. Ideas. All different words to describe the realm of the intuitive mind. It’s already happening: Why Snapchat is Screwed. Snapchat is a successful mobile social network that is rumored to have passed on a $3Billion acquisition offer from Facebook (and possibly a bigger one from Google). The technology is easy to replicate, their users will likely leave if they introduce ads, and there is no compelling reason like personal data keeping users from moving to a competing product. Time to innovate?